2.08.2006

Lending a helping hand

I've asked before for my wonderful friends, family and readers to help our soldiers in need. When we sent goody bags to the Marines in Iraq, a few of you came to their aid.

Now, it is time for the guys who are back at home and struggling to make ends meet. Please go check out ArmyWife ToddlerMom's link to a program that helps these guys out.

I would be skeptical had I not lived it myself. When I met my wonderful soldier, he was making a whopping $12,000 a year. Swear to God. On duty 24/7, available at a phone call to Uncle Sam and he made an amazing $250 per week. Now, he was a single soldier living in the barracks. Once we got married and he moved off post, he got BAQ (unsure what the acronym stands for all these years later) and he made a little more. Not much, but a little. I knew MANY soldier families that were on welfare. That is how little our military gets paid. Enough that they qualified for WIC, food stamps, you name it. Now, most of these families worked hard and did not take advantage of the system, there are always a few who do. But, these families deserve our support. They get paid shit, they're on duty all the time and they VOLUNTARILY do it. These wives and husband and children put up with long (and often dangerous) deployments, low pay and the toll it takes on their relationships with little complaint.

So, if you can, scrape up a few bucks and send it over to help these families.

2 Comments:

BAQ was part of the off-post equation. The other parts were the BAS (Basic Allowance for Sustainace) used to make up for the fact that off-posters were not able to eat their 3 meals in the posh DFACs (chow halls) and the BAH (Basic Housing Allowance), an attempt to even out the cost to troops across the US. BAH was a kicker that was paid out based on the average cost of housing in a geographic area. Say you were a recruiter stationed in NYC. BAQ alone would not even come close to paying for a studio apartment in NYC, so BAH in an amount equal to the difference between the cost of average rent and BAQ would be paid to the soldier.

Example: Say BAQ was $300 and the average monthly rent for a studio apartment in NYC was $2000. BAH might be set at $1700. It's up to the SM to find an apartment that would be covered by his BAH+BAQ.

BTW, I was at stationed at Hood from '94 to '96, living the high life on West Ft. Hood with 504MIBDE